Linn v. State

• Decision Date: 14 June 2019
• Docket Number: No. 17-0007,17-0007
• Parties: Cathryn Ann LINN, Appellant, v. STATE of Iowa, Appellee.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

929 N.W.2d 717

Cathryn Ann LINN, Appellant,

v.STATE of Iowa, Appellee.

No. 17-0007

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Filed June 14, 2019

Darrell G. Meyer, Marshalltown, (until withdrawal), and then Thomas A. Hurd of Glazebrook & Hurd, LLP, Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney General, Alan R. Ostergren, County Attorney, and Korie L. Shippee, Assistant County Attorney, for appellee.

APPEL, Justice.

In this case, an applicant for postconviction relief (PCR), Cathryn Ann Linn, claimed in the proceeding below that her trial counsel was ineffective for not adducing evidence of battered woman syndrome (BWS).¹ To prove the claim, she sought a court-appointed BWS expert.

After Linn waited more than a year to learn whether the district court would appoint an expert, the State moved for summary disposition. The district court then denied Linn’s request to appoint an expert and, in the same order, cited her failure to provide an expert in granting summary judgment for the State.

Linn appealed, assigning error to those rulings and claiming ineffective assistance of PCR counsel. The court of appeals affirmed, and we granted further review.

We hold the district court abused its discretion in denying the expert. We also hold the summary disposition was erroneous. The district court’s errors include (1) viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the moving party instead of the nonmoving party as required by our law; (2) drawing inferences in favor of the movant instead of the nonmovant as required by our law; (3) relying on the lack of an expert in the very order that the court first addressed, and denied, Linn’s request for appointment of an expert; and (4) concluding the record did not show facts to support Linn’s claim that BWS should have been raised at her trial in spite of a trial transcript with evidence of physical, psychological, and verbal abuse of the type that causes BWS.

This case does not call upon us to decide whether Linn suffered BWS. This is especially true on review of a summary disposition, when the question before us is merely whether there is a genuine dispute that Linn’s trial counsel was ineffective. Answering that question requires us to consider whether Linn might be a BWS victim.

We vacate the court of appeals' decision, reverse the district court’s judgment, and remand to the district court for further proceedings.

I. Factual Background.

The summary disposition record shows the following facts.² Linn was approximately forty-two years old in 2006. She is from Muscatine County. Barry Blanchard was also from the Muscatine County area but moved around after high school. He returned to Muscatine County in the fall of 2006.

Linn and Blanchard began dating in the fall of 2006. They had dated for a short while a couple decades earlier. Their more recent relationship began well, and they saw each other a lot. Linn felt they were in love. Linn told Jeff Scott, Blanchard’s friend, that she and Blanchard got along great and that she really liked him. Linn cared for Blanchard, gave him money, and let him use her food stamp card even though he would spend her money and not bring back change. During this time, Blanchard had access to most of Linn’s financial resources.

At the same time, Blanchard threatened and struck her. He warned, "[N]obody else [is] going to ever have you." And, according to Linn’s trial testimony,

He'd always – he had always told me that he would cut me from my [stem to stern and rape me] while I was still bleeding, and he had told me that [on] several occasions. Clotheslining³ me, making me repeat it to him. Probably more than 15, between 15 and 20 times I had to repeat it, or he would say it to me.

Then he would kiss her.

Blanchard also told Linn of previous violence, including that he killed someone in California, killed people in the military, and beat his ex-partner, Vicki Espinoza, "within an inch of her life." An officer who responded to a domestic assault between Blanchard and Espinoza in 1999 described Espinoza’s face as bloody and bruised. One year earlier, Blanchard was charged with simple assault for fighting with Espinoza’s ex-husband. In 1995, Blanchard dared a police officer, "Go ahead and mace me," before being taken into police custody on a disorderly conduct charge. Blanchard warned Linn that knowing his history, she "better not f* * *ing piss him off." Blanchard had a reputation for being tough and intimidating people.

In the beginning of their relationship, Linn did not take Blanchard’s threats and potential for violence against her seriously. She thought he was showing her dominance because he knew that she liked to be dominated. Linn consented to certain rough sex acts with Blanchard; if the two were already engaged in sexual intercourse she allowed Blanchard to put his hands around her throat to temporarily decrease oxygen flow. Still, Linn made clear to Blanchard that physical aggression when they were not having sexual intercourse was unacceptable. "[G]rabbing [Linn] in a physically aggressive manner" was not "part of a mating ritual." Linn never had any type of physical encounter with Blanchard that would have led him to believe that coming into her room and strangling her was part of a sexual act.

They drank to the point of intoxication much of the time they were together. At times, they also used methamphetamine.

Linn owned a rifle that belonged to her ex-husband before he committed suicide. She knew how to use the weapon and was not afraid of it. She took weapons safety courses. Blanchard knew of the rifle and would often take it out to show off to his friends.

After Linn and Blanchard began their relationship in the fall of 2006, Blanchard was arrested on Thanksgiving Day for an outstanding warrant. He was imprisoned for forty-five days.

While Blanchard was in prison, he was "adamant" that "he would hurt [Linn] or any other individual if he found [her] with another individual" or "if [he] even [thought she was] with another individual." Also during this time, Linn had gallbladder issues and complications from surgery which continued until at least February 6.

When Blanchard got out of jail, he and Linn continued their relationship. Blanchard began residing at Linn’s house the day he got out of jail.

Towards the end of January 2007, approximately two weeks before February 6, Linn told Blanchard that the relationship was not working and he had to move out. He acceded and continually told her that he would move out. But during the two weeks before February 6, he did not do so. She "kept thinking okay, he said today’s the day, today’s the day, today’s the day. Two weeks ... passed with today’s the day." Linn made some calls to nearby shelters or gave Blanchard information to make the calls himself. Blanchard skipped appointments in which he was to talk with people at shelters. Linn asked him to stay with his friend Scott or with his family, but "he told [her] no ... and he just did not leave." Linn also tried to help Blanchard get a job, but he did not follow through.

Once she told him that their relationship was at its end, Linn became scared and intimidated by Blanchard because of his threats and stories of previous violence. Linn explained that "during this last month period, and the last two-week period, ... [she] just wanted to get out safe. [She] didn't want it to ever turn violent. [She] just wanted [them] to part ways." She "had no reason not to believe that he would kill [her].... He was very adamant about letting [her] know that if [she] messed up, [she] would be dead." Yet Linn did not like involving the police. And during the two weeks before February 6, they were not fighting to the point that she needed to call the police to have Blanchard removed from the home.

Additionally, after she told Blanchard that their relationship was over, Linn began noticing that Blanchard was taking some of her possessions. These included her money, medicine, and cigarettes. She began hiding these things.

On February 6, Blanchard called his friend Scott. Blanchard told Scott that he and Linn were splitting up, it was mutual, he was moving out, and he would go to California if he did not get a job within a week. Blanchard also called Kim Crees, Scott’s girlfriend and Linn’s acquaintance, that morning. He told her that he and Linn were splitting up and they were not fighting; rather, it just was not working out and he was excited that he got a job for the day shoveling snow.

Later that day, in the afternoon, Linn called Blanchard en route to her home after a visit to an Iowa City hospital. Blanchard told Linn that he could not move to a shelter because of something in his past.

Upon Linn’s return to her home, she found Blanchard on the sidewalk near the house holding a shovel. Blanchard told Linn he had nowhere to stay that night and asked if he could sleep in her car or on her porch. Linn understood this request in the context that "he knew [her] persona well enough that [she] would not allow that to happen." Linn believed "[Blanchard] knew [she] would say no" to him spending the night in the car or on the porch. Linn allowed him to spend the night on a couch in the living room of her home because it was bitter cold outside. That allowance was not an invitation for him to spend the night in her bed or to have sex with her.

Blanchard left in the afternoon to work a snow shoveling job and came back to her house later that evening. Because of her medical issues, Linn was experiencing "[n]ausea, pain. [She] couldn't do a lot of walking around and lifting. [She] laid down, [she] was in bed a lot, laying down. Throwing up some.... Lots of pain." She spent much of the afternoon while Blanchard was gone cuddling with her son on the couch. Blanchard returned to the house sometime between 6:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. He offered her the money he earned. She refused and said he should keep it because he was going to be starting out on his own. Linn took her...